


gasoline and dissertations and souffle and novels

by annegirlblythe



Series: A Coda for Violet [2]
Category: Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Angst, Count Olaf was a dick and Violet reflects, Gen, Healing, POV First Person, Poetry, Recovery, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 15:19:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7623847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annegirlblythe/pseuds/annegirlblythe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A poem in which one Violet Baudelaire, whose life is settled in a city apartment with her siblings and Bea, reflects on all the places she still senses the effects their thirteen escapes from Count Olaf. </p><p>"I still hear you sometimes, when someone rings the doorbell or takes my arm to introduce me to a charming new acquaintance with a name like willful blindness, your miserable voice will ring through my head - a wheezy reminder that my life has not always belonged to me."</p>
            </blockquote>





	gasoline and dissertations and souffle and novels

Last night I got home from my office lab space to find a piece of souffle on the counter, and a note addressing it to me.

Last night I got home with gasoline on every part of me except my hair to find a new draft of the dissertation on the library printer. 

Last night I got home and six year old Bea was asleep in her bed - a new and still loved copy of The Last Battle open on her chest.

My world is no longer crawlspace and narrow escape, my world is no longer anagram and winding nightmare, sugarbowl secrets and harpoon desperation - my world has not been upside down in years - but I still see you sometimes. Part of me cannot hate you because even when I wake from nightmare after nightmare about those bad months, I remember that the child in the next room owes her life to you - and that her eyes are just as reptile shiny, but we have taught her to use her wit for good. 

I still hear you sometimes, when someone rings the doorbell or takes my arm to introduce me to a charming new acquaintance with a name like willful blindness, your miserable voice will ring through my head - a wheezy reminder that my life has not always belonged to me. I never let that phantom voice pronounce my name; if I own something - it is myself. 

My brother does not have the same austere conviction - he says our experiences make up who we are, and that the three of us are you, that we are disguises and hypnotic optometry - as much as we are this windowed house, as much as we are gasoline and dissertations and souffle and novels. 

I did not feed my sister ersatz fairies when she lost her first love - as vile as her slick chasm must have felt - she has known worse losses. She spent twenty four hours like Rapunzel one time, while I was caught in another sick whimsy - we spent a year on your sick whims - sometimes on the shakiest of peppermint nights, I pull out the deed to our home, the adoption papers, my bank account details. 

I have to know that I am the one in control these days. 

I used to think about electric fences, used to imagine building a moat to keep the hostile world out. Every time I’d be talked into seeing sense, your carnivorous leer would shine through little Bea’s bedroom window - things are better now. Sometimes I burn twelve candles for all the times we narrowly escaped death - and one for the time you did not. 

Last night, before we went to bed, the four of us played with Ink-the-misnomer in the library until the candles burnt out - even in the hushed light I cannot see this sacred room as grim. 

There are lecture halls and thesis review committees, now, and dentist appointments and parent-teacher conferences and meetings with our quandary friends for tea - there are tears and nostalgia and flowers for graves - there is gasoline, dissertations, souffle and novels - our life here is solid, we do not make decisions on a slippery slope - 

The criteria for villainy is wide, and when we tuck her in for peaceful sleeps we don't have the privilege of ourselves - I wonder if Bea will think me the victim here, or if she will see that my escape routes were not always tunnels, but reverse-engineered plots of entrapment, if she will see that I am not the soft purple I have claimed to be, but the violent red one letter off from my name. I know that this is not our last home, that by the time she is making value judgements, I will have accomplished so much more. 

We have not settled. There is still Oxford and Cambridge - there is still Alexandria and Burj Khalifa and tiny Parisian cafes - there is still the entire world -

As much as you wanted us to see only our dirty city, we will carry you with us when we travel, we will leave your memory bit by choking bit on airplanes, over dinners with new acquaintances, in every place we find happiness. 

You will be slowly left behind as we rise from your ashes. 

Last night I got home from my office lab space to find a piece of souffle, a new draft of the dissertation, and an open copy of the The Last Battle, last night, I got home to find my family at peace.


End file.
